1. The Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computerized collection and processing of data and, more particularly, to novel systems and methods for industrial process control.
2. The Background Art
People in the business of manufacturing products, companies producing services, entities that harvest resources for sale, and the like often believe that their business operates on actions. People and organizations alike often mistake activity for the core of their business. Doing physical activities that produce an obvious and measurable output, product, or dollar value are often credited with the success of a business. Nevertheless, behind every business activity lie decisions made and implemented in order to achieve each consequent result.
Companies are always interested in improving their productivity, profitability, outputs, and other measures of compensation. As a result, a major resource in the many business entities and environments is the human resource. Human resources, unlike machines, have opinions and feelings of their own. Human beings have opinions with respect to one another on nearly any subject held in common. That is, individuals have opinions as to their own value in an organization, their own value in their roles, their own values to the overall operation. Similarly, human beings typically have opinions as to the relative values of others to an organization, to a task, to any endeavor with which associated.
Human resources are often evaluated in subjective terms. Subjectivity creates immediate conflict in many instances due to a reviewer and a reviewed person making evaluations based on differing criteria, differing events, and different views of facts. Employee management, training, education, employment, evaluation, and the like are often not reliable, repeatable, or objective, despite claims to being all of the above and more in terms of fairness. What is needed is a system and method for providing reliable, repeatable, useful employee evaluations. Moreover, employee evaluations often take excessive amounts of time, attention, emotional cost, and the like. Evaluations are often responsible for employees' frustration, employees' attitudes, and so forth. Likewise, employee evaluations typically take excessive amounts of time away from other administrative tasks. Nevertheless, few can doubt the importance of human resources and the proper evaluation and management thereof.
Therefore, it would be very helpful to obtain a system for evaluating employees in which employees evaluations require a minimal amount of time. Rather than days, weeks, and even months for execution of employee evaluation processes, a simple straight forward approach using computers, both to collect data and process data, would be extremely useful. Moreover, if an employee evaluation system were both reliable, repeatable, substantially objective, normalized over a broad base of opinions, accurately and quickly executed, and accurately and quickly processed to provide meaningful outputs, such a system would be an extremely valuable advance in the state of the art.
What is needed is a system that provides a system of criteria that can cover many and varied situations, repeatably, through multiple evaluations, provide meaningful results, that can be implemented both by management, and in training or sustaining individuals in a work force. Such a system implemented on computers whereby employee investment in time and emotions is minimized, and management investment in understanding, justifying, reporting, negotiating, and discussing both inputs and results can be minimized.
What is needed likewise is a set of criteria on the basis of which an employee evaluation system may be founded. A set o criteria that can cover all situations, at all levels of an organization, over all levels of responsibility and over all entities within a business, whether organizations, suborganizations, individuals, or the like, such a system would be universally valuable as it would be universally applicable.
Since businesses operate based on various operational priorities with various organizational structures, capital expenditures and distributions of overhead expenses (e.g. machinery, real estate, other resources, etc.) a universal management style seems impossible. Moreover, universal management and leaderhip criteria seem impossible to define. Various consultants have derived their own organizational theories, some tried, some untried, to promote. Similarly, people who have been successful or organizations that have been successful are often consulted, venerated, or deified as experts on all aspects of management or industrial success. Various consultants work on detailed analysis of physical steps executed by workers in a factory. Other consultants operate on the mental attitudes within organizations and individuals. Yet other experts operate on information flow. Other experts operate to improve capital expenditures and the management thereof. Yet other experts operate on improving communication processes. Thus, various areas of focus each attempt to solve all of the problems of management.
Most management techniques reduce to simple money management techniques. Many business schools are complained of in industry as producing only people who understand principle and interest. Allocation of capital assets is not the only factor, especially when human resources, the variability of people, and the variability of particular situations must be taken into account. All the world is not a bank. Many businesses still must manage people, products, markets, and customers.
Management consultants, managers, and other evangelists of particular approaches to management often preach a style of management or leadership that suited their particular organization, time, product, market, industry, personnel, or the like. Styles of management or leadership do not necessarily translate to other situations, personnel, and the like. Many “principles” and “secrets” of management, and success amount to little more than stylistic preferences that suit personalities and organizations in which they were successful before. Moreover, many other aspects of success may have been ignored, while the full success attribution was given to a particular portion or element implemented.
Many business realize the importance of their decision processes. Therefore, many businesses seek help from management, consultants, and the like to assist in improving decision processes. Many decision methodologies are evangelized by professors, consultants, university business departments, and the like. Nevertheless, all decisions in an organization are not equal. Moreover, all decisions cannot be handled in exactly the same way. It has been found that each decision made by an organization or individual depends on many decisions that were made previously. Likewise, each decision made effects a host of downstream decisions.
One approach that has gained recent popularity is the concept of “decision frames.” The process of using decision frames in order to couch a decision in its proper environment or context requires an identification and listing of contributions affecting a decision. However, contributions to a decision are treated as an infinite universe of facts, events, resources, personnel, issues, and the like that may affect a decision.
As such, the contribution to a decision becomes an infinitely large set of constraints, issues, or the like from which one arbitrarily picks those deemed to be most significant. Effectively, much of the structure the decision frames promise actually is illusory. Moreover, decision frame theory does not appear to distinguish one decision type from another, the sequencing of decisions that relate to one another, or the fact that different decisions have different import, require different processes or are used in different ways that may affect the decision.
What is needed, but deemed impossible by those in a position to preach management theories, is an exclusive set of decision types that fit every decision. Similarly, what is needed is an exhaustive set such that every decision can be made, every decision can be identified, and every decision can be covered by a set of decision types.
An important element of military strategy is focus. Similarly, in many businesses, focus becomes a success. One philosophical observation is that people who are not so bright actually succeed more often because they maintain their focus and do not get distracted by other alternatives and opportunities. That is, many businesses and people succeed due to a focus or harping on a single point.
Much of management consulting amounts merely to motivation. That is, many consultants identify a particular principle, often a single principle, and then simply prompt motivation to focus on that principle and not forget it. Accordingly, they leave to the “student” the exercise of finding a way. Many businesses, with either negative or positive motivations believe that providing sufficient motivation will lead people to solve problems.
Many times people do solve problems. Nevertheless, problems continue to crop up that should not return, because they should have been handled properly in the first place. Thus, providing a single principle, and much motivation, expecting the “student to work out the details,” is not necessarily good management practice, does not extend overall personality types, and is difficult to implement in an organization of any size.
What is needed is a system and method whereby a more balanced view of all decisions and activities can be kept in focus at once, so that a weak area is not allowed to hold its strong area hostage. A very visible principle is not allowed to obscure a less understood principle and a misunderstood principle is not allowed to hold hostage great principles that are failing in implementation.
Some industrial processes are defined to the extent that they sequence certain events, activities, or decisions. For example, modern software development acknowledges the need to establish requirements for software, function and performance before beginning coding. Similarly, testing logically follows completion of coding, and is inappropriate before.